LES PORTEURS / DE DRAGERS: 9 June 2022, CINEMATEK, 19h
03 May 2022
Welkom - Bienvenu - Welcome
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SYNOPSIS
An elephant's bone to stir in the food, a feather to catch winged
termites at night, eight butterflies, a rope made from fragrant roots,
150 metres of exposed but not yet developed film destined for the
Ministry of Colonies...
In THE PORTERS, young people
in Brussels, with many different backgrounds and horizons, sit together
on benches in parks. On their phones they watch the oldest preserved
film footage of the Congo: silent documentary images shot by a Belgian
military attaché, Armand Hutereau, during a colonial expedition in the
northeast of Congo between 1911 and 1913.
The aim of the trip was to collect as many objects as possible for the new Congo Museum in Tervuren (Belgium). The word collect is a typical colonial euphemism and in the French-speaking discourse of the time even the word “récolter “is used, to harvest.
In THE PORTERS, groups of Brussels youth play a game based on the objects that were brought to Belgium, they listen to the songs of the porters, the countless anonymous men who carried the more than 8,000 objects on their bare shoulders. From the heart of Brussels' parks, the kids palm the spoils.
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more info & tickets NL https://cinematek.be/programma...
More info & tickets FR https://cinematek.be/fr/progra...
Please note: the film is French and Dutch spoken
On the evening of the avant-premiere in Brussels (9 June 2022), the film will be shown with French and Dutch subtitles (no English subtitles)